Page 22

Going to the hospital would drag this job out and delay returning her, but taking her back doesn’t feel like the right thing anymore. It feels like abandonment dressed up as professionalism.

I glance at the handcuffs sitting next to my duffle bag.

I don’t want to put those back on her. I really fucking don’t.

I keep holding her wrist.

“Viktoriya. Look at me.” I wait until she raises those green eyes to my face. Pretty eyes that must sparkle when she’s happy, but right now, they’re clouded with pain. “We need an understanding, you and me. You can’t keep trying to run from me.”

She takes a shuddering breath.

“But I don’t want to go there,” she whispers.

She’s said it before, only this time, instead of getting frustrated, I watch her face closely, and I see her absolute dread.

“Why not?”

She opens her mouth. Closes it. Looks down at her wrist in my hands.

I wait. I can be patient for her. I can sit here all morning if that’s what it takes. There is something she desperately wants to say, but her words seem strangled by fear, and I want the truth with an urgency that borders on dangerous.

If she gives me a name—if she gives me even a hint that someone at home is hurting her—I’ll throw this job in a ditch. I’ll call Dragan, cancel the payment, and burn the contract. And then I’ll start a new job. An unofficial one, unpaid, the kind I’ve never taken in my life. I’ll find whoever put this terror in her eyes and make them deeply, permanently regret it.

I’ll do it. I’ll burn it all down for her right now.

I hold my breath, my heart hammering against my ribs.

I don’t trust this feeling, but I can’t pull back.

“Viktoriya,” I say when she still hasn’t replied. “Talk to me. Is someone hurting you? Because if they are, I can make a call to Dragan right now and tell him I’m not handing you over. We can sort this out. I just need you to tell me—”

“No!”

Her reaction is sharp, violent, and sudden. She yanks her wrist out of my hands and springs to her feet, her face slamming shuttered and cold. “Don’t call anyone. I don’t need you to do anything.”

I stand up, stepping into her space and taking hold of her shoulders, desperate to pull her back into the warmth we just shared. “Viktoriya, if someone at home is—”

“Stop!” She shrugs out of my grip and stumbles backward, her chest heaving. Her voice is shaking, and her eyes are bright with tears, but her jaw is locked hard. “Stop pretending you’re some kind of hero when you’re not.”

“I—” I begin, reaching out a hand.

“You’re not a hero,” she spits at me, weaponizing every piece of distance she can find. “You’re an asshole who handcuffed me to a table and nearly choked me to death. I don’t need your help, and I don’t want it.”

Her words slice through my heart.

The warmth in the room vanishes instantly. The fragile bridge we built between each other shatters into dust. The thick, dark walls I’ve kept up for fifteen years slam back into place.

She’s right. I’m not a hero. I’m a hired gun carrying cargo.

I close my raised hand into a tight fist and let it drop heavily to my side. My face hardens, every trace of gentleness wiped clean.

“Get in the car,” I say, my voice dead and emotionless. “We’re leaving.”

6

Viktoriya

The silence in the car for the past forty minutes has been suffocating.